do not get me wrong here but I aint no author.When I was a young lad,the first book I read was hubbard"s Battle Field Earth,and I fell in love with space opera.I was curios to see if any author had similar experience.
do not get me wrong here but I aint no author.When I was a young lad,the first book I read was hubbard"s Battle Field Earth,and I fell in love with space opera.I was curios to see if any author had similar experience.
For me, it was E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman ans Skylark series. Battlefield Earth had it's moments, but could have benefited from some heavy editing .
For me, it was E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman ans Skylark series. Battlefield Earth had it's moments, but could have benefited from some heavy editing .
Those who live in grass houses shouldn't stow thrones. :)
And I read that twice before I hit "post". I'm possibly the world's worst proofreader. I stand by my opinion about Hubbard's writing, though. ;-) LOL
If I recall correctly, the first book I read was, Dick and Jane. I didn't fall in love with it. :)
Later, I read more mature and sophisticated books. I don't think I have ever fallen in love with one genre for I developed a love for many genres.
In my teens, I read a number of books that impressed me. The first book I read and still recall reading was Westward with the Vikings. I think I was 14 YO when I checked it out of my town's library. I was enjoying the tale of Viking conquest, when I had my first encounter with sex in a story. Looking back on the sex scenes, which I remember as only a few paragraphs long, they were extremely mild with very little detail. Nothing like what we read here on SOL.
If I recall correctly, the first book I read was, Dick and Jane. I didn't fall in love with it. :)
I think MOST of us started with less "adult" selections as our First Books.
If I recall correctly, the first book I read was, Dick and Jane. I didn't fall in love with it. :)
The memory of having to stand up in class and read "See Dick", "See Jane" has stuck with me all these years.
Partly embarassment from having to stand up and read something so stupid. After school, I would read the evening newspaper, and seldom needed any help.
And partly because I had been working with my dad all summer "helping" to build houses, and I was very tempted to improve the story with a few choice words I'd learned from the carpenters.
There was a lot of talk about dick, Jane, and lots of other girls.
I never read SciFi, and I don't have the memory to remember the first book I read, but I do remember the books in my early years that I loved: "God is my Co-pilot," a novel about the death march on Bataan (don't remember the title), "The Untouchables," "The Godfather," Mickey Mantle's biography (I don't remember the title), and a few James Bond books, especially "Dr. No" (the tarantula scene was much better in the book than the movie).
The first science fiction books that I remember were written by Robert Helnlein and Arthur Clark. Although today I find some of Heinlein's books difficult to become immersed in, although I did in the past.
As a younger kid, I read more fantasy (Earthsea, Narnia) than science fiction (Danny Dunn), but I didn't make any distinction in what i read — I just read a lot. The first science fiction I read with the intent of reading science fiction was George Stewart's classic Earth Abides. (It's still in print! So is his disaster novel, Storm, which was the inspiration for why we name hurricanes.)
The summer house where we often stayed had a couple by Clarke and Asimov in its small library. I reread Earthlight and A Fall of Moondust and I, Robot several times, when I ran out of library books.
First series was the Doc Savage books and The Mac Bolan (Executioner)books.
In my teens it was the Ashes series by William Johnstone.
Then The Survivalist series by Jerry Ahern and The Deathlands series by James Axler.
Not all science fiction but most set in a future universe after an apocalyptic war.
If my parents had ever read all the sex scenes in those books they would have burned them and my ass up.
Then The Survivalist series by Jerry Ahern
I read that series, and would never really call it sci-fi. More like the typical male adventure with a lot of gun porn thrown in.
I'd say all of the series mentioned by fightorflight fall into the category of pulp. While not generally considered to be its own genre, pulp tends to borrow elements from a variety of other genres without really being a part of any of them.
There's really not that much difference between Survivalist and Conan other than having the blood, guts, and sex changed to guns, explosions, and bikinis.
My first SF series was Asimov's 'Foundation' books- I was very pleased to discover he had written a 'prequel' and a few more episodes. I read the whole 7 books recently, and I have to admit, I enjoyed it just as much as a 65 year old as I did as a 14 year old.
Apparently, NEtflix or someone is bringing out (or has brought out) a TV version - I refuse to watch it, because I fear someone else's vision will be very different to my vision of the same story.
It's on Apple+ in Canada. Probably the same in the US, but that's not always true.
While I know I read books before but the books that made me love reading were Andrea Norton's Witch World books when I was about 13-14.
Andrea Norton's Witch World books
She wrote primarily under the pen name Andre Norton, but also under Andrew North and Allen Weston.
While Andrea looks like it could be her real name, Andre Alice Norton was born Alice Mary Norton, February 17, 1912 – March 17, 2005. She was an American writer of science fiction and fantasy, who also wrote works of historical and contemporary fiction.
HM.
I knew I spelled it wrong
The question is which way wrong?
• Her full pen name was Andre Alice Norton, but most publications ignored her middle name, naming Andre Norton as author. Andrea would be misspelled by an additional 'a' at the end.
• Middle names are usually shortened to their initial giving Andre A. Norton, misspelled to Andrea Norton.
HM.
Well, she has explicitly said that she used a male pen name because SF was targetting a teen male audience at that time and male authors sold better than perceived female authors. So any spelling that includes "Andrea" is out and out wrong in multiple ways.
Also, looking back, I recall reading a copy of an Ace Double with Bertram Chandler's "Into the Alternate Universe", and "The Coils of Time", when I was about 8. I also remember an Ace Double with Jack Vance's "The Five Gold Bands" and "The Dragon Masters".
The first science fiction I read was undoubtedly Tom Swift. I was also a reader of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew.
Heinlein was likely the first 'real' science fiction author I read (or nearly), and I can't tell when, but it was likely at 8 or 9 years old, based on context. I also started with more 'adult' stories and read his 'juveniles' much later.
I first made my way through The Lord of the Rings at 11, and I'd definitely been reading a wide variety of science fiction and fantasy before that.
I'd sort of forgotten about Tom Swift. I remember reading them in first grade, which shocked my teacher a bit. Not what I was reading, but that I was so far above grade level. I still have books 1-about 33. BTW, you can get the collected original Tom Swift (Sr.) on Kindle for not much money. Pretty entertaining, except some of the language and descriptions of characters is pretty cringe-worthy today.
Haven't reread them, but old Nancy Drew has some very cringeworthy elements (my daughter liked them, and we had ones from the 1940s and 1950s in the mix).
Yeah, the old Nancy Drew and the old Hardy Boys suffer from the same cringeworthy language that Tom Swift did. I had a bunch of those that I sort of inherited from older cousins. They stories are still enjoyable, but you just have to gloss over those problems. They're period pieces, as old-fashioned as Model T's.
I rarely read syfy because I find them to technical that I don't know what they mean if that makes any sense.
I rarely read syfy because I find them to technical that I don't know what they mean if that makes any sense.
It does to me. I find that true with SciFi movies.
I never read SciFi, but I used to watch SciFi movies and enjoy them. But no longer. I find SciFi movies today are more interested in the technical stuff than the story. "Beam me up, Scottie," worked for me. Now they explain how his molecules are transmitted.
I can live with that, comparatively.
The true 'jumped the shark' moment was Lucas introducing 'midichlorians' as a cause for The Force. It made no sense and was incredibly stupid.
Overexplaining is often an enormous mistake.
The true 'jumped the shark' moment was Lucas introducing 'midichlorians' as a cause for The Force. It made no sense and was incredibly stupid.
Most of the fanbase agrees with you there.
The only good thing about the last 3 movies, is that they make the prequels seem better.
I'm one of the contrarians who found some pretty good things in the new movies (particularly The Last Jedi).
That, and I really dislike the logic of the prequels: 'If you really, really, really hate evil, that hate will fester in you and you'll wind up embracing and loving evil - the right way to not become evil is to not hate evil'.
That said, there's no easy fix for the last 3, compared to, say, 'The Phantom Edit' (which greatly improves Episode 1), or the 'Darth Jar Jar' theory (which I approve of).
The last 3 could have been (much) better, but they managed to leave the series in a very good place for the next chapter, which is (for me) their saving grace.
The last 3 could have been (much) better, but they managed to leave the series in a very good place for the next chapter, which is (for me) their saving grace.
To be honest, I pretty much found them to be just poor remakes of the first three movies. 7, 8, and 9 were quite literally just rehashes of 4, 5, and 6. And bringing back the 4 core characters as little more than cameos and never having them actually meet was mystifying. They pretty much seemed to go out of their way to disconnect it as much as they could from the original.
When i was 9, I got really sick. I was confined to bed and the school sent around a teacher once a week with lessons. (Until SHE got pneumonia.) She brought books from the library. I had seen a Paul Bunyan cartoon, so I asked if they had any books on him. She found one in the jr high library, but was afraid that it was too difficult for me. I gave it back next week as finished and asked for more. I haven't slowed down my reading since.
She found one in the jr high library, but was afraid that it was too difficult for me.
Sounds like she was grooming you, giving you books above you age group.
Why do people call science fiction anything other than that. Or if they have serious problems, SF works, why pronounce it sigh fie?
SF works, why pronounce it sigh fie?
Do they?
Over here in Germany it's usually pronounced sigh figh.
Same with High Fidelity aka HiFi: they pronounce it high figh.
Back to SF. It's an acronym and each character should be pronounced separately (the rule in German), but if I pronounce it es ef (according to German rules) the 'in'-crowd regards me as uncool.
HM.
Or if they have serious problems, SF works, why pronounce it sigh fie?
Sigh Figh is easier to pronounce than Ess Eff.
AJ